Native Americans fight to ban marijuana in a quarter of Washington state

The Yakama Nation tribe of Native Americans is ramping up its efforts to ensure a new law legalizing recreational marijuana in Washington state won’t apply on ancestral land.

Voters in 2012 elected to abolish the prohibition against pot in
both Colorado and Washington states, but the latter is only this
month issuing its first legal weed licenses to dispensaries that
will grow and process marijuana. If the Yakama Nation has its
say, however, then a large chunk of Washington will reject the
new state law.

The 10,000-member Yakama Nation has already said pot will stay
illegal on around 1.2 million acres of reservation in central
Washington where state law is trumped by local rules, but
Reuters reported this week that the tribe is
considering “a bold move that could test the limits of tribal
sovereignty” by seeking to keep weed outlawed on another
10.8 million acres of ancestral land.

According to Reuters journalist Jonathan Kaminsky, the Yakama
want to make sure the cultivation and selling of marijuana
remains against the law on a huge stretch of Washington that was
ceded to the United States government through an 1855 treaty, but
where the tribe members maintain hunting, food-gathering and
fishing rights.

The Yakama has previously won similar legal battles, Kaminsky
wrote, including one in which it successfully fought off efforts
to put a landfill on the ceded land. This time, however, the
tribe wants to make sure marijuana remains outlawed on a chunk of
land that now includes parts of 10 counties across the state.

Already, Kaminsky acknowledged, the Yakama have filed challenges
to roughly 1,300 pending marijuana licenses being considered in
that part of the state. If the tribe’s efforts fail, he added,
then the Yakama may file suit.

In an editorial published by the Seattle PI newspaper last
year, Nation Chairman Harry Smiskin said “The citizens of the
state of Washington do not have the authority to vote what
happens on Yakama lands.”

“It is that simple,” Smiskin said. “The Yakama Law
and Order Code prohibit the sale, use or production of marijuana
on the lands we control. We are constantly finding very
sophisticated grows and ending them. Our police have won federal
awards for this work. We are proud of our efforts. We do not want
our people, or anyone else, to use, grow or sell marijuana on our
lands.”

“We have had a long and unpleasant history with marijuana —
just as we have had with alcohol,” Smiskin added. “We
fight them both on our lands.”

"We're merely exercising what the treaty allows us to do, and
that is prevent marijuana grows (and sales) on those lands,”
he told the Yakima Herald-Republic back in January. Since then,
the Yakama have filed around 1,000 additional objections with
state and federal governments against marijuana license
applicants, indicating that the tribe has without a doubt refused
to relinquish its fight.

According to some, though, those challenges won’t end up the way
the Yakama want them to.

"I think they run into the issue of not having standing to,
in essence, bring suit on behalf of the federal government,"
American Civil Liberties Union Washington criminal justice
director Alison Holcomb Holcomb told the Associated Press earlier this year. "The
federal government at this time has shown it has no intention of
trying to stop the law."

Yakima, WA Councilman Bill Lover, who opposes pot businesses,
told Reuters for this week’s report that the Yakama’s plan could
put a lot of other issues at stake.

“When they start talking about ceded land, there's a lot of
other things involved other than marijuana, like water
rights," he told Kaminsky.

“It's a steep hill they're trying to climb," added Ron
Allen, the chairman of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe in western
Washington where pot use remains banned on reservation land.
"But I recognize their right to try to control the
environment their community lives within."

The Washington state Liquor Control Board has previously ruled
that no marijuana licenses will be issued to business on federal
land, including Indian reservations, but did not address ceded
grounds like the 10-million acres now being discussed. Meanwhile,
the first recreational marijuana dispensaries became licensed by
Washington state on March 6, and retail stores are expected to
open in late June.

In Colorado, where the nation’s first legal weed shops opened on
January 1, the state managed to collect around $ 2 million in
taxes within the first four weeks of operation.